My Lover's Gone
by Frakme
Summary: T'Pol reflects on the loss of her bondmate.


**T'Pol/? could be Trip, could be Jonathan. I'll leave it to the reader to decide.**

**Having a bad a day and that usually translates to angsty deathfics.**

**Inspired by Dido's "My Lover's Gone"**

She enters the house, dust from the recent storm clinging to her robes. It is the first time she has entered since the funeral, two days ago. The last time she was here, so was he, alive, breathing, whistling in that tuneless way that offended her sensitive ears yet she would hear again.

His boots are by the door as he'd left them, one of them tipped over, careless yet profoundly sad. She would not witness him slip his feet into them again.

She moves to the kitchen area, there is a slight smell of spoiled food lingering. She'd been preparing their meal when he'd come in from the garden, greyish, gasping for breath, then falling into her arms. A cardiac arrest, she realised, as she felt the pain he was experiencing richochet through their bond. She acted quickly, laying him down on the floor, sending the medical alert out on the comm, performing CPR.

Ten minutes later a Vulcan medical team had arrived, she had ceased the CPR to allow them to work. Illogical, she reflected. She had already known her bondmate of nearly forty years had gone, the agonising pain in her head as the bond tore apart told her his katra had gone where she could not follow.

She hadn't even been aware of sinking to her knees, overwhelmed by loss until she felt the cool presence of the healer's mind entering her psyche, anchoring her into this reality.

With a nod from the Healer, the medical team had ceased their work.

"We grieve with thee, T'Sai T'Pol" they had said as they put her bondmate's body onto a stretcher and taken it out of the house.

The healer had looked at her calmly, the compassion shining in her deep, black eyes.

"Is there someone who can be here with you, T'Sai?"

"No, Healer. There is no need to concern yourself." Her last family member, her mother, had been dead many years. Now she was alone. More alone that she had even been before, feeling the emptiness in her mind where her bondmate's warm, human presence used to be.

She cleans the debris in the kitchen away, slowly and deliberately, focusing on the task almost as a type of meditation.

She walks into the small living space just off the kitchen and examines it as if she has never seen it before. So many memories of him, he had left his mark on the place, not just in the objects he had collected or been given over the years; a diver's helmet, a small statue of Zephram Cochrane, a water polo ball. But clues such as a slightly crooked photo of the two of them on the bridge of the NX-01, a t-shirt haphazardly folded and placed on the back of a chair, the way the door to their bedroom is slightly ajar although she always preferred it shut.

She moves into the bedroom; the bed is neatly made but his pyjamas are peeking out from under the pillow. She pulls them out, breathes in his scent.

It was illogical for her to be so… undone by his death as she feels the tears begin to form in her eyes. He was human; his life span would be much shorter than his despite her being much older than him. She had watched him age rapidly, by Vulcan standards, while she had hardly changed over their years of marriage.

Perhaps though, it was the suddenness of his death. Though once again she knows the warning signs were there, he had suffered two minor heart attacks in recent months.

She goes about straightening things that are perfectly straight, while ignoring the small signs of human chaos.

She needs to meditate, so finds her meditation candle and lights it.

She stares into the small flame and whispers her bondmate's name.

She will walk her path alone now. She has to centre herself for the years ahead. She and her bondmate had discussed his mortality and she knew he did not wish her to grieve overlong.

"Cry a little for me, T'Pol" he'd said, as he held her in his arms. "But not too long."

Her cheeks are wet and she finds a soft towel to dry her face. She cannot allow any more to flow. It is the not the Vulcan way.


End file.
